Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘I saw the lights go out and I guessed you’d be here alone. Join me for dinner, chèrie,’ he murmured.

‘But there’s a blackout—’

‘We have a generator.’

She stood there, teeth chattering with nerves, hair dripping round her. ‘I’m all wet—’

‘You would like me to dry you?’

‘I’ll need to get dressed.’

‘Don’t bother on my account.’ In the light of the torch, mocking tawny eyes set below the lush black fringe of his lashes rested on her hot face. ‘Are you sure you’re not too warm in that towel?’

‘You don’t even know my name. It’s—’

‘Not important right now.’

‘Tabby,’ she completed shakily, taken aback by the intensity of his appraisal.

‘You don’t look at all like a little brown cat. You’re smaller than I thought you would be, too,’ Christien confided, inspecting her with the torch beam. ‘But you have fabulous skin. Don’t bother with make-up. I hate it.’

For Tabby, his appearance was her every dream come true and she was terrified that he would disappear while she was getting dressed. Giving her the torch, he told her he would wait in the car.

‘I don’t know your name,’ she said when she climbed into his car.

‘Naturellement…of course you do,’ he contradicted with disturbing confidence.

‘All right…I asked one of the locals who you were,’ Tabby mumbled.

‘Don’t waste your best lines on me. I’ve heard them all before and honesty is fresher.’

‘I don’t know you…I shouldn’t have got into a car with you,’ Tabby exclaimed, because she was suddenly feeling very much out of her depth in his company.

‘But I feel I know you so well already, ma belle. Every night of the past four I have watched you strip off and cavort naked in the pool down here.’

At the news that her swimming sessions had not been as private as she had believed them to be, Tabby gasped in shock. ‘I beg your pardon—?’

‘Don’t be coy. I respect nerve and enterprise in a woman. I also admire a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it,’ Christien breathed with a husky intimacy. ‘And the simple ploy was remarkably effective…here I am.’

Her aghast embarrassment fought with her recognition of his apparent respect for what he had interpreted as an adventurous campaign to attract his attention. The temptation to pose as an enterprising go-getting woman triumphed over all common sense. She did not angrily demand to know how he could possibly have seen her bathing in a pool surrounded by a wall or ask him how on earth he could have sunk low enough to spy on her. She did not contradict his outrageously self-satisfied assumption that she had been breaking her neck to get off with him and, as mistakes went, hiding behind that fake image was her first mistake with Christien.

There was no great mystery about why she ended up in Christien’s bed on their very first date either. She was so excited at dining alone with him in the incredibly opulent villa that she barely ate a mouthful but she did drink three glasses of wine. Nor did she have a prayer of resisting a guy with his seductive expertise. In fact she was a lost cause from the first kiss for nobody could kiss like Christien could.

‘Zut alors…I am crazy for you,’ Christien intoned with ragged emphasis, sweeping her off her feet in high romantic style as if she were not a healthy lump frequently scorned by her stepmother as being on the larger side of overweight. For that alone, for his simple ability to lift her without grunting with effort, she would have loved him.

‘You enchant me,’ Christien swore, so that she felt generous enough to try and hide the fact that the first time he made love to her and she lost her virginity without him n

oticing, it hurt. And when he seemed to suspect that things hadn’t gone quite as well for her as he seemed to have expected, she pretended to go to sleep because she was so embarrassed.

So for her, it was not sex, it was never just sex, because the first night she went to sleep in his arms, she very much hoped that he would not want to do what they had just done very often. In the middle of the night, she crept out of the bed and he sat up and switched on the light. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

‘Er…back down the hill,’ Tabby muttered, worried sick that Pippa would have reported her absence from the bedroom they shared.

‘I don’t want to let you go but…Ciel!’ Christien groaned. ‘What was I thinking of? To keep you this late was madness. How liberal are your family?’

Her father would have taken a shotgun to him without hesitation, but it would have been the opposite of cool to admit that. He was very disconcerted when she refused even to let him take her back in the car. She was even more dismayed when he insisted on walking her down the road to the very entrance of the farmhouse. ‘Can I see you tomorrow morning for breakfast?’ he asked.

‘I’ll try to make lunch—’